Vampire Cultivation System in a Hidden World of Monsters

I held Mel's bleeding body in my arms. "Dylan," she said. "Dylan, I love you."

"Oh Mel," I said, tears forming. "What happened?"

"Johnny. Johnny, he caught me getting ready to leave. He didn't like that," she said.

"That motherfucker," I said. My legs tensed like I was going to stand up and go after Johnny, but I hesitated.

"Hey. Hey. Stay with me. What's done is done. I only have a few moments left. I can feel it," she said. "Everything's getting cold."

"Oh, Mel. I'm so sorry," I said, my tears dropping onto her face. "I don't know what I'll do without you. You're my best friend."

"Just a friend?" She said.

"I said I needed to think about it," I said, wiping my tears off her face. "How about this? I'll kiss you before you go, but that doesn't mean we're dating. Ok?" I laughed sadly.

"I'll take it," she said. "Pucker up, Buttercup." She made a stupid kissy face at me.

I laughed mirthlessly again. I leaned in and kissed her. It was a sad, hard kiss. Definitely not one of my best. But I did my best with the emotions I was feeling at the time.

She grabbed the back of my head and kissed me back. We held the kiss until her hand dropped away from my head and she went limp in my arms. I pulled my head back and looked at Mel's lifeless face.

She was staring at me and then again, staring at nothing. I closed her eyes for her. I set her down on the floor. "Fuck, Mel. What am I gonna do?"

"Hey," Johnny said, as he came around the corner. Then he saw Mel. "Oh, good, she's still in the building. I was afraid she'd gotten outside. Little bitch got the drop on me. She punched right in the nuts."

Johnny leaned down and started to pick Mel up. "Help me get rid of her body." Experience new stories on empire

"You killed my best friend and now you want me to help you get rid of her body? Fuck that and fuck you!" I said. I grabbed my backpack which had the cash in it, and walked past Johnny to leave.

Johnny grabbed my arm and said, "She was going to turn us over to the cops. I've seen it a million times. She was stuffing all her stuff into a bag and she was going to leave in the middle of the night."

"No one leaves in the middle of the night without something to hide. She was gonna go to the cops and turn us in for mistreatment or whatever. She knew too much about our operations. I had to do it. For the family."

"No, Johnny. You didn't do this for the family. You did it for yourself. Think about that when all you have left is henchmen to order around and nothing else. Everyone who's ever cared about you has either died or deserted you. You think that's a coincidence? I'm done, man. I'm out of here," I said.

I walked down the hall and turned the corner. "Wait, kid! Come back! Fuck!" Johnny said.

I walked down the stairs to the backdoor and left. And I never looked back.

My mom grabbing my arm brought me back to the present. "Are you alright, honey! Your eyes went all distant for a moment."

"Yeah, I'm ok. I was just remembering why I left in the first place," I said. "Do you remember?" I asked Johnny.

"I don't know. Because I was mean to you or something?" He said.

"No. It was because you killed Mel," I said.

"Who?" Johnny said. "I don't remember any Mel."

I realized he didn't even know her real name. He just knew her as Brandy. That made me even more angry. "Does Brandy ring any bells?" I said.

"What, the whore? You left because of some whore? Were you in love with her or something?" Johnny said.

"No. She was my best friend. You killed my best friend and you didn't give two shits about it," I said.

I felt like I should be pointing a gun at his face or something. Instead of just standing over him sitting in the chair. It wasn't as threatening as I wanted to be right now.

Despite the fact that I could cut his head off before he knew what was happening, it didn't feel like he understood that. So I drew my sword. And not only did I draw my sword, I activated Blood Saw on it and placed the blade right next to his neck.

"Why does the blade look like that? What are you doing?" Johnny said, flinching away from the blade.

I just moved the blade as he moved his head and neck away, until he was leaning over the side of the chair backwards, staring up at me. Now this was more like it. He understood the threat now.

I barely pressed the blade against his neck and the Blood Saw effect cut right through his skin. It was a small cut, but boy did his eyes widen when I did that. He finally understood I was holding a buzzsaw up to his neck, daring him to flinch.

"Now that I have your attention," I said. "You killed my best friend. What do you have to say in your defense before I kill you?"

"She was gonna go to the cops! I had no other choice!" Johnny said.

"No, she wasn't going to the cops. She was going to run away with me. We were going to start a band together. Away from you," I said.

"What? So you were in love with her!" Johnny said.

"No. As I said before, we were best friends, and you fucking killed her! And the part I find so irritating is that you don't give a fuck!" I said.

"You keep saying you were best friends, but all I'm hearing is 'I'm still a pathetic little boy who fell in love with a whore and thought I was going to live happily ever after with her and we were gonna ride off into the sunset,'" he said.

"It doesn't work like that! Once a whore, always a whore. That was one of the first rules I tried to teach you. You don't fall in love with whores, strippers, or gold diggers. They never change. They can't."

"Everything might've been fine for a while, but when you ran out of money, and you would have, she would go back to whoring and you would be sitting there with your dick in your hand, going 'But you're my best friend Brandy. How could you do this to me?'"

"Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me I'm fucking wrong!"

I shook my head. I didn't know if what he said was true or not. We probably would have ran out of money. Even just on my own, I ended up running out of money eventually. That's when I joined the band with Tommy and Dan.

And we did do odd jobs here and there and we lived out of our van, but it was fine. We eventually got on our feet. Sure Brandy might've gone back to whoring so we could get by, but we weren't dating. I didn't own her.

Yeah, I wouldn't have liked it, but it would have been a hell of a lot better than living with him and being used like a tool, day in, day out. Even if whoring was just a thing she could never give up, she'd still be my friend, and that's more than I could've ever said for Johnny.

"At least she was fun to be around," I said. "Unlike you. You were an asshole, and you will always be an asshole, unless I do something about it."

"What are you gonna do? Kill me? How does that solve anything? You'll never get your dead whore back!" He said.

"I could get her back. If you told me where her body was, but I think she deserves her rest. She lived a hard life, and I'm not so sure anything I can do would change that," I said.

"But I can change you. You're a liability on this team. With how different we are as people, how do I know you won't do something drastic I disagree with like last time?"

'System. Can I exert control over vampires that I've turned like in the books and movies?'

[Yes, you can. It's called enthralling. After you turn a vampire, you can enthrall them by exerting your will over them. This isn't automatic. You have to defeat their will with yours. But you have an advantage in the fight, because you turned them]

'What does enthralling do?'

[The thrall retains their original personality, but they must follow any command that you give them]

'Oh. So I could just command him to reflect on his past wrongs and become a better person. Right?'

[You can do that. The exactness of the results aren't guaranteed that way, but you can do it. Another option, is you could just command him to change his personality to fit your will]

'But that would overwrite his personality and negate any future choices he makes from being his own, to being mine. Right?'

[Correct]

'I'd rather go the hard way and make him learn from his mistakes, without destroying who he is. That sounds too fucked up for my sensibilities.'

[Fair enough]

"What do you mean, you can change me?" He said.

"I'd rather show you, than tell you," I said. I put away my sword, grabbed Johnny by the head and bit into his neck.